The impact of media convergence: By Mike Proulx

February 18, 2015

Last week I trekked up to my undergraduate Alma mater to address students who were being honored for earning a 3.8 or higher GPA. With the intent of not crushing this group of overachievers, I tried to explain that their GPAs don’t really matter outside of college.

It was a bit of a risk, but everything I said was from the heart. And it was also a chance for me to talk about my mentor, Don Harley, who had an incredible impact on my transition from college to career.

January 01, 2015

While most prefer the origial, I always favored Back to the Future IIand how the movie seamlessly integrates the past, present, and future -- I've re-watched the movie dozens of times.

And back in 1989 when the movie premiered, it was fascinating to imagine what life would be like more than 26 years into the future. It was hard to fathom even what the year 2000 would be like let alone 2015.

But we've made it. And you can bet in the months, weeks, and days leading up to Wednesday October 21, 2015, there'll be lots of focus on the fact that we don't yet have flying cars, self-lacing Nike hightops, or hoverboards...

...But in so many ways we've surpassed, both in technology and as a society, the events depicted in that now classic movie. We've got a long way to go, but I cannot be more excited for what our unwritten future holds.

November 01, 2014

A few days ago, popular Viner Jerome Jarre announced he was done selling out to brands. Whether or not this is simply a publicity stunt is still unclear. But what is clear is that young social media celebs are making big money with branded ensorsements.

With YouTube stars seen as more popular than regular celebrities among teens, you can bet this is just the beginning of what will be an increasing flood of eager youth everywhere trying to hit it big on Vine, Snapchat and whatever emerging platform lies ahead...

October 27, 2014

Exactly twenty years ago today, NBC aired the sixth episode of Friends (the one where Joey gets cast as Al Pacino's butt double), Boyz II Men’s I’ll Make Love To You was at the top of the charts, TV personality Kelly Osbourne turned ten years old, and the movie Stargate was just about to hit theaters.

Something else happened, within the World Wide Web, that very same day. On Thursday October 27, 1994, online “magazine” HotWired made its big debut and along with it, the launch of the very first commercial banner ad.

That ad was from AT&T and simply read, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” And people did just that, in droves, as the ad boasted a 78% click-through rate (CTR) and was touted as a “wonderful tool for marketers.”

Ironic, ‘eh? Since over time, banner ad CTRs have plummeted to an average of .08% (yes, that IS a decimal point). To put this in perspective, my colleague, Noah King, helped me to visualize this: Take four airplanes filled with people and expose them to a banner ad. In 1994, every single person in three of those four planes (and then some) would have clicked the ad. Today, merely one person on just one of those planes would click.

So on this day, should we be celebrating the banner ad’s birthday or planning its funeral? You might be thinking how far ad tech has come in the past two decades: targeting, audience buying, dynamic creative, and of course, the word du jour, “programmatic.” These are all great advancements that, by themselves, don’t solve the fundamental issue inherent to display ads: banner blindness.

If the masses are subconsciously not seeing our ads in the first place, no amount of automation will make a material difference – we’re merely optimizing advertising mediocrity. And how’s the industry responding? Spray and pray – We’re flooding the web with more impressions and higher frequencies hoping our target happens to glance over at the right place at the right time and want to read our marketing messages.

There’s a reason why “native ads” have been hyped up these past couple of years. They show some promise in that (when done well) they bring an element of creativity back into online advertising. The tradeoff? It’s more work to concept individual experiences platform-by-platform and site-by-site. But perhaps that’s how it should be. Because when creative, technology, and user experience all come together, great things can happen.

Or we can simply continue to keep the two-decade old banner ad on life support. But if we do, its copy should read, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You won’t.”

September 07, 2014

Mental Floss found this 21 year old chronical of the Internet. And the best part? In 1993 when this telecast originally aired on PBS, it was just at the very beginning of the dawn of World Wide Web.

It's a bit like going back in time and there's something fascinating about that (as I mentioned when I re-watched Triumph of the Nerds and Nerds 2.0). My favorite part? I love how the host of the show just calls it "Internet" versus "the Internet."

June 04, 2014

I remember experiencing SocialGuide for the first time several years ago (back when it was a TV guide powered by Twitter). Its concept made so much sense and I actually used it quite often to discover popular shows on TV.